Born 30 January 1863 in London, the eighth of the nine children of Horatio Henry Flemming, owner and manager of a saddlery and harness business, and Julia Steggal, his wife. He was educated at University College School, London, passing at sixteen to University College Medical School, where he was university scholar in medicine in 1887 and took honours in midwifery, surgery, materia medica, and anatomy at the MB examination in the same year, and won the gold medal at the MD examination in 1888. He was demonstrator of anatomy in 1886, and later house physician at University College Hospital and demonstrator of anatomy to Professor Sir George D Thane, at University College. As a young man he coached students privately, and being interested in the medical education of women he earned a reprimand for taking women students into the anatomical museum at University College. After taking the Fellowship in 1889 Flemming decided to specialize in ophthalmology. He served as clinical assistant to Sir John Tweedy at the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, Moorfields, having as a colleague Sir John H Parsons, and from 1900 to 1919 was an additional assistant surgeon there, elected on the expansion of the staff. He failed at his first candidature for the assistant surgeoncy under Sir John Tweedy at University College Hospital, but was elected a year later on the resignation of Marcus Gunn in 1897. He was elected surgeon in 1904, and resigned as consulting surgeon in 1923, when a eulogy with a good portrait was published in the *UCH Magazine*. He continued his private practice at 70 Harley Street for five years, but believing that the lack of day-to-day hospital experience unfitted him for treating his own patients adequately he retired to St John's Wood in 1928. In 1939 he moved to The Firs, Upper Basildon, near Pangbourne, Reading. While living there he was elected a member of the Reading Pathological Society in 1939. Flemming married on 29 December 1892 Emily Elizabeth Haden, MD, a former student of the Royal Free Hospital and subsequently consulting physician to the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital, formerly the New Hospital for Women, on whose staff Flemming himself served as ophthalmic surgeon. Mrs Flemming died at Upper Basildon on 12 August 1940 and a memorial service for her was held at Trinity Church, Marylebone Road, on 21 August (*Lancet*, 1940, 2, 218). Flemming was a first-rate teacher and was the last professor of ophthalmic medicine and surgery at University College before the chair was absorbed by the University of London; he received the title of emeritus on retirement. He served on several official and other committees including the Committee for the Prevention of Blindness and the Departmental Committee on the Partially Blind. With Marcus Gunn, Flemming helped to found the training school for ophthalmic nurses at Moorfields. He published a number of papers in the *Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society*, and was particularly interested in the ocular signs of general disease, such as thrombosis of the cavernous sinus. He was always an explorer and student of old London, and published a history of Harley Street. After retirement he worked seriously at London archaeology, was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1931, and made a study of monastic infirmaries, particularly that of Westminster, for the London Museum at Lancaster House. Flemming died at Upper Basildon on 19 December 1941, aged 78. He was survived by three sons and one daughter. One of his sons, Cecil Wood Flemming, is an FRCS. Publication: *Harley Street from early times to the present day*. London, 1939.